By Kim Vojnov
As I
entered the Lang Pioneer Village Museum
collection of artefacts, I was instantly swept back in time, imagining my life
as a pioneer. Carving out an existence in this country would be difficult enough
in terms of dealing with climate, housing and agriculture; I struggled to
imagine what the medical practices would have been like, especially in terms of
trying to raise healthy children. As a mom myself, I can’t express the immense gratitude
I feel when it comes to our modern medical system meeting the needs of my own
kids. Imagining the already existing hardships, I tried to wrap my head around
how it would feel to have a sick child in this time period.
We are all
aware of how many diseases killed early settlers, yet I found myself wondering
how often the herbal remedies, bloodletting practices and bottled remedies that contained alcohol, cocaine, or opium were used and successful on
children. Questions flooded my mind: What if my child needed a valuable type of
medicine? How realistic would it be that with the barter system, I would
actually have the ‘equity’ available to attain that medicine? Would all doctors
offer similar treatments and what options did I have if one didn’t work? What
would the side effects be-or would they even matter? Perhaps you simply had
blind faith and just did your best to treat your sick kids.
One thing
that caught my eye as I strolled through the fascinating collection of artefacts
was a little orange and black box in the medical section. In big white letters
the words Diatussin Syrup jumped out
at me. It turns out that a company, Bischoff, produced this, along with many other patented
medicines in order to treat the most serious health maladies during the time
period. Doctors
prescribed a dosage of a few drops of Diatussin for pertussis, otherwise known as
“whooping cough”. This illness was, and still is, one of the most contagious
ones out there as it spreads through the air by incessant coughing. So many
lives have been lost due to its brutal side effects and unfortunately, it almost
always seems to affect young children.
While this
bacterial infection still exists today, a major difference is that babies are
now immunized against it and as a result, many lives are saved. As I examined
the Diatussin bottle on the shelf at Lang, I hoped that whoever used
it to treat their child all those years ago had been successful. I decided that
I was going to let myself imagine that they had been. I left Lang Pioneer
Village with a feeling of incredible thanks to those before us who have created
and tried medicinal practices and treatment in order to better future lives.
Kim Vojnov is a faulty member at Trinity College School and a guest writer for the Museum.